On my departure from the Los Angeles Times

In a personal note, I’m delighted to be back at HoopsHype, which I dropped at the insistence of my paper, the Los Angeles Times, before it told me I have to stop writing for them, too.

This is a sentimental journey for me. It’s the last story I’m typing out on my Times laptop, a trusty (?) Dell Latitude D420, before dropping it off (sob) today, along with my ID card.

Actually, I’m totally cool. I’m not upset with the paper, or any more than I was. For all our internecine skirmishing and bitching, I spent 32 years working alongside, everyone in the sports department, having more fun than we realized, and/or wearing them out, for which they almost all forgave me, I think.

I was only going to work one more season and I just got paid through April. As far as I’m concerned, I just got martyred (sports writer version, not Joan of Arc), with severance!